US regulators have closed bidding for the day in the hotly contested 800MW New York offshore wind auction.
The sale will continue Friday morning at 8:30am Eastern time.
Three companies bid a record $25.5m in the twenty-seventh and final round of the day on Thursday.
The previous high price was paid in 2014, when Renexia/US Wind bid $8.7m to win two lease areas off the coast of Maryland
The New York sale is being held as a blind, ascending-bid online auction with the asking prices set by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
More than a dozen developers, as well as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), are eligible to vie for the 32,000-hectare site off the coast of Long Island.
It’s the first time a government agency has joined the bidding for a US offshore wind lease and NYSERDA has made it clear it intends to win.
If the agency is successful, it plans to package the lease with an offtake mechanism and then issue a competitive call to developers.
Today’s sale is BOEM’s sixth such auction.
Renexia/US Wind claimed sites off the coasts of Maryland and New Jersey, Dong Energy holds leases off New Jersey and Massachusetts, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners secured a 1GW Massachusetts lease area, Deepwater Wind won the 1GW Rhode Island/Massachusetts zone and regulated utility Dominion holds a 2GW lease area off Virginia.
BOEM expects to auction the Kitty Hawk lease area off the coast of North Carolina next year and planning is underway for sites off South Carolina, California and Hawaii.
Check reNews.biz throughout the day for auction updates.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Bidding underway in NY auction
UPDATE: Auction pauses for the night as price hits $25.5m after 27 rounds
By EBS